DERBY -- A tight, curvy stretch of Route 34 known to area residents as a danger zone claimed the life of a 25-year-old Seymour woman Monday morning, when her sport-utility vehicle collided head-on with a tractor-trailer.

Police said Nicole C. McDonald, 25, of Housatonic Terrace, was driving her 2013 Toyota RAV4 west on Route 34 when the SUV crashed into a tractor-trailer driven by Luis Ambioris Garcia, 28, of Syracuse, N.Y., just west of Lakeview Terrace in the area of Pink House Cove at about 7:44 a.m.

McDonald was pronounced dead at the scene. Ambioris was not injured.

No charges have been filed as a result of the crash, which remained under investigation Monday, said Lt. Sal Frosceno, Derby police spokesman.

"We don't know what happened yet," Frosceno said, declining to speculate on the cause of the crash. "We have to wait for the investigation to be complete."

After seeing news reports of the crash Monday, friends and neighbors of McDonald knew one thing: The tight stretch of Route 34 near Pink House Cove claimed the life of another beloved mother from their neighborhood.

Just over three years ago, Marie Lepri headed down Route 34 to pick up her two daughters June 7, 2010, and was killed in a head-on collision near Pink House Cove.

Lepri lived on Park Avenue in Derby, not far from the scene of the crash that killed her. But she had lived in the small, family-oriented neighborhood off Housatonic Terrace in Seymour, where McDonald lived with her young family, said Amber Burton, a mother herself and a neighbor of McDonald.

"That's two neighbors we lost in the same spot," she said. "Nobody's doing anything about that ... for two neighbors to die in a 50-house neighborhood in the same spot."

Burton and Angela Aurora, who lives next to McDonald's home, believed the narrow route should be widened to prevent more crashes.

"It's a big project, but it is what it is," Aurora said.

Monday was not the first time area residents raised concerns over that part of Route 34.

Derby Mayor Anthony Staffieri, who went to the crash scene Monday morning, said there have been several severe accidents on the road, which is also known as Roosevelt Drive.

"One time, residents even tried to get the state to declare it a scenic road so trucks couldn't travel on it," he said.

But the crash Monday did more than raise concerns about a possibly dangerous road, it took an 8-year-old girl's mother and a neighbor as popular with the moms next door as with their children.

"The kids, they loved being with her," Aurora said.

For one thing, there was the trampoline in McDonald's yard -- "All the kids were always at her house, because she had a trampoline," Burton said.

Then there were the frequent trips across the street to Lake Housatonic, an impoundment of the Housatonic River where McDonald would march a caravan of neighborhood kids to spend some time splashing in the sun.

"She definitely was the fun mom," Burton said.

While the children may have especially enjoyed the thrills of bouncing in McDonald's yard or easing into cool water under her supervision, her neighbors remembered her for her generosity and care.